BACKGROUND :
When Posco, one of world’s largest Steel Producers with Headquarters in Korea, restructured the Product Portfolio of their Posco SS Vina Mill in Vietnam, they took the decision to cease producing Rebar and this lead to having to sell their REBAR MILL.
Posco asked HILCO to make an offer for this very recent (less than 5 years of use) DANIELI Rebar Mill. Hilco made the offer and after a short negotiation period Posco and Hilco signed an Asset Purchase Agreement and Hilco provided the funds to Posco for the reorganization and this enabled Posco to enter into a partnership with Yamato Steel from Japan; the reorganized company is now called Posco Yamato Vina Steel.
TYPE OF SALE :
After the Purchase at the end of December 2019, we started to market the Rebar Mill Danieli and soon found customers, who were interested in purchasing the Mill, however soon afterwards the Covid Crisis broke out and while inspecting the Mill with the first customers in February 2020, Vietnam did no longer allow foreign visitors and this lasted until November 2021, when the borders opened up again.
Meanwhile the interest in buying the Rebar Mill was enormous, in May 2020 we held a Virtual Inspection- the Production Manager used his Mobil phone to show the Mill in detail and over 50! Participants of this virtual inspection asked questions during a 3 hour virtual meeting. We followed up the call with an inspection report from Lloyds Register.
However all potential buyers wanted their own technical staff to inspect and they would not decide on the purchase of the Mill with a cost in the Tens of Millions Dollars without having seen and touched the Mill, all waited to visit until Vietnam would open up.
EQUIPMENT :
This was “State-of-the Art” Rebar Mill from DANIELI MORGARDSHAMMAR built in Italy with a capacity of 500.000 Ton/Year and shipped to Vietnam and installed in 2015, commissioned early 2016, including a Walking Beam Reheat Furnace, 18 Housingless Stands, QBT System, “Sund Birsta”Bundle and Binding Machine.
TRANSACTION :
One of the potential buyers was a family business from Mexico, who were very desperate to purchase the Mill and we agreed a sale with them, they paid us a deposit to hold the. Mill until Vietnam would open up and when this happened, they immediately came over to inspect at the end of November 2021, just prior to us having to dismantle the Mill, as the space was required by Posco.
After their inspection, they confirmed the purchase on a FOB Vietnamese Port basis and we started dismantling, using one of Vietnam’ s largest Contractors; we installed a local Project Manager and we just sent 200 containers and 25 bulk loads to the Container Terminal company for customs inspection and awaiting arrival of the chartered ship to transport the cargo to Mexico.
HIGHLIGHT :
The absolute highlight was the sale after all Covid related problems and the fact that we were able to work with professionals away from home, when we could not handle Project Management during a 9 months period without Vietnamese support.
The progress planning, the health & safety, the quality of dismantling, packing and loading was all supervised with daily Teams Meetings from our Amsterdam office, while Our Vice President Operations flew in 3 times (after a lot of paperwork to allow him into the country) to check onsite.
CONCLUSION :
We all thought it would be easy to sell this Rebar Mill within a short period, being only a few years old, but none of us had expected the Pandemic to happen and going on for such a long period.
By contract we had to remove the Rebar Mill within a certain period and we were lucky that Posco allowed us to extend that period for a short while, but we managed to get it sold and removed in time, making all parties happy.
